


Memory Error

by Riona



Category: Doki Doki Literature Club! (Visual Novel)
Genre: Gen, Self-Harm References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-02
Updated: 2017-11-02
Packaged: 2019-01-28 16:02:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12610328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riona/pseuds/Riona
Summary: He just wanted to join a club and meet some cute girls. What's wrong with his life? What's wrong with his head?





	Memory Error

“Hey,” Natsuki says. She doesn’t have eyes. “So I guess this is where you show me your stupid poem or whatever.”

He opens his mouth to say – he seriously doesn’t know what to say in this situation. He just opens his mouth.

He’s hallucinating. That’s the only explanation. Natsuki definitely had eyes a moment ago, and she’d be reacting somehow if they’d _actually_ gone missing. So what he needs to say is that he’s going to see the school nurse.

“You’re not really making me want to show it to you,” he hears himself saying instead.

“Don’t be a coward. Hand it over,” Natsuki says, sticking out her hand, and her eyes are back, and everything’s normal.

-

Writing a poem is tough.

He’s trying. He really is. He wants to create something... maybe not _good_ , he’s still a novice, but as good as he can manage. But everything he writes down just comes out like a disconnected list of words.

Maybe he should ask Sayori for pointers. She’s just next door, after—

The pen slips from his grasp. He plants his elbows on the desk, presses his forehead into the heels of his hands, tightens his fingers in his hair.

Who is Sayori?

Who is Sayori?

Who is Sayori?

-

Yuri is bleeding, it seems like an impossible number of cuts, and he takes a sharp step back, trying to process, trying to make sense of this. The knife she brought to his house, her weird edginess when he injured himself – maybe he should have realised, maybe he’s just been letting obvious signs slip past him, just like with—

(What knife? Yuri has never been to his house.)

He’s in the classroom, and Yuri isn’t back yet, and Monika is smiling apologetically at him from across the room. He doesn’t know why.

His throat tightens when Yuri steps through the doorway. Something is _seriously wrong_ and he doesn’t know what.

He finds himself staring at the sleeve of her uniform.

“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting,” Yuri says, setting down the water pitcher. “Do you like oolong tea?”

“Are you okay?” he asks.

Yuri blinks. “I’m fine. Why do you ask? I’m fine.”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I just...” Something is wrong. Something is wrong with Yuri, he _knows_ it, but somehow he can’t remember what it is.

It can’t be that important if he doesn’t remember, right?

He opens his mouth to say _it’s nothing_.

“I can’t lose another friend,” he says.

He doesn’t know how she’s going to react. Maybe she’ll tell him to mind his own business. Maybe she’ll ask him who he lost, and he won’t have an answer. Why did he say that? What’s happening to him?

Her eyes turn strange and distant. “A _friend_ ,” she says.

The music’s stopped. Was there music playing?

“Okay!” Monika says, clapping her hands together. “It’s time to share our poems!”

-

He doesn’t remember dropping to his knees, but he’s there, kneeling, next to Yuri’s body. He wants to call her name. He wants to call an ambulance, just in case it’s somehow possible to save her. He wants to scream.

He can’t speak. He can’t move.

Yuri’s voice is filling the air around him, but whatever she’s saying doesn’t make sense, and she _can’t_ be speaking. She can’t be. She’s dead.

He can’t move.

The sun sets. The sun rises. He can’t move. Yuri is still speaking. Yuri is still dead.

He’s there for two days, on his knees, staring at her corpse. Two days. It feels like years. Until Natsuki comes in and breaks the spell, he thinks that it might be forever.

He’s almost bored by the end, he’s _bored_ of looking at this dead girl, and it doesn’t seem like that should be possible in the midst of all the horror.

-

Monika is speaking to him.

Only she’s not speaking _to_ him, she’s speaking _through_ him, she’s looking straight past his eyes to someone else she seems to think she’s in contact with. It’s like he’s not even there.

He’s not really focusing on what she’s saying, because, forgive him, he’s kind of got a lot on his mind. He just... doesn’t know _what_ , exactly. The weird void he can see out of the classroom window is unsettling enough, but there’s something else.

Something terrible happened, he knows that much. He feels like a lot of terrible things happened. But they’re hovering just out of his reach, he can’t remember...

It’s a moment before he realises he can speak. That probably shouldn’t surprise him, but for some reason it does. It feels like he hasn’t spoken in a long time.

“What the _hell_ is going on?” he demands.

“Whoa!” Monika jerks back, then frowns and leans in again, looking closely at his eyes. “Oh. I thought we were alone at last. But _you’re_ still here, aren’t you?”

He tries to stand up, move back from her, but he’s tied to the chair.

When did that happen?

“In my defence,” Monika says, “it’s easy to forget about you. You’re even less real than the others. You don’t even have a character file.” Her frown deepens. “I guess that means I can’t delete you, though.” 

That’s right: she was saying something about... deleting people. It didn’t make a lot of sense. And there was something else before that, something that stuck in his mind even in his distracted state.

“You mentioned a Sayori,” he says. The name seems to catch in his throat. “Who is Sayori?”

“Look,” Monika says. There’s a touch of ice to it. “I’m sure you don’t mean to be rude, but you’re kind of intruding on a private conversation. I wasn’t talking to you.”

“I know!” he says. “And I don’t understand! There’s nobody else here!”

Which doesn’t make sense. Why is he alone with Monika, in a classroom, at night? (Whatever’s going on outside the windows, that’s just the night sky, it has to be.) They barely know each other, right? Well, they were in the same class last year, but...

Also, why is he tied to the chair? That suddenly seems like an important question.

“What’s with this?” he demands, trying to gesture at the ropes around his wrists and failing because, oh, yeah, it’s not easy to gesture when your arms are tied in place.

Monika sighs, as if he’s somehow _overreacting_ to suddenly finding himself tied to a chair. “You’re really determined to be a third wheel, aren’t you?”

He still has no idea who the second wheel is supposed to be, but maybe it’d be simplest to focus on one stupid question at a time. He tugs pointedly against his bonds.

Monika reaches up and pulls on the end of the ribbon she's wearing. Draws it out into a long strip of fabric, shakes her hair out. Reties the bow, which seems a little pointless now that it’s not in her hair.

“That’s not answering my question,” he says.

Monika secures the bow with a couple of extra knots. “If you left, they’d have to go with you.” Tugs twice on the end of the ribbon to make sure it isn’t unravelling. Stands up, steps lightly around the desk. “They wouldn’t have a choice. I couldn’t just let you force them away.”

He opens his mouth to ask who _they_ are, and Monika shoves the bow into it. Ties it tightly around the back of his head while he’s gagging on the fabric.

“Now,” Monika says, dropping back into the seat opposite him. “Where were we?”

He tries to ask a lot of outraged questions simultaneously, but the mass of ribbon in his mouth means they come out garbled and unintelligible.

Monika frowns. Taps her fingers on the desk. “That’s not really great at keeping him quiet, is it? I’m sorry. I didn’t realise he’d be such a problem.”

“Who are you talking to?” he tries to demand, not very successfully.

“I don’t know whether there are any assets in this world that would make a good gag. I already had to borrow the rope from that Sayori scene.”

“ _Who is Sayori?_ ”

And suddenly the ribbon is gone, and Monika is gone, and—

Monika?

Who is Monika?

-

It’s an ordinary school day, like any other. He’s waiting for Sayori, as usual, and she comes half-skipping out of the house, as usual, and—

—and he falls to his knees and starts sobbing, and he doesn’t know why.

“Eh? Are you okay?”

He can’t look up to see her, it’s too much, it’s overwhelming somehow. But he knows she’s running over here; he can hear her footsteps.

She crouches next to him, puts her arms around him, tentatively. He can’t really hug her back in this position, but he brings his arms up to hold hers tighter against his chest.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, anxiously.

He shakes his head. He can barely speak. “I don’t know.”

She’s quiet for a moment. “Does this mean you remember?”

Remember what? He feels like he can’t remember anything. His head’s a mess. But he’s sure _something_ important happened.

Sayori hesitates for a moment longer. “This is _you_. Isn’t it? It’s not them. It’s – _you_. It’s my friend.”

He looks over at her at last, to ask what she’s talking about. There are tears in her eyes. He forgets what he was going to say.

“You missed me?” she asks.

It doesn’t make sense that she’d ask. They see each other every day.

“Of course I did,” he says. His voice sounds so unsteady.

Sayori lets out a breath. Smiles, although her eyes are still bright with tears.

“I... could kind of understand why she did it, you know,” she says. “Knowing all the things she knew. It probably makes me a horrible person, but I was kind of tempted...” She shakes her head, fiercely, and when she speaks again her voice is stronger. “You’re more important than any stupid person playing this game.”

He has no idea what she’s saying. But somehow, seeing her now, here and alive and blazing with determination, it doesn’t seem to matter.

“Anyway, we should get going.” She takes his hand and pulls him to his feet. “You’re joining a club today, right?”


End file.
